[governance] Speakers for IGF - ideas?

[Dan Krimm]

Veni,

I'm not really sure what you mean by this:

>If those, who are "right" never want to spend time and help ICANN
>achieve its goals, change, perform better, etc., etc., then they are
>not the "right" ones.

I spent a lot of time this past spring and summer putting a *lot* of time
into participation in ICANN, on behalf of NCUC (Whois WG and KTCN
campaign).  I never would have had such time available if I had not be out
of a job and looking for a new one.

I wouldn't bother commenting at all if I didn't care about ICANN improving
itself.  And even if you consider my comments "abrasive" somehow, they are
ultimately intended constructively, perhaps as a sort of "tough love" --
for the Internet at least, if not necessarily for every aspect of ICANN's
policies.  The first step to constructive change is to abandon the denial
of what could be wrong with the current setup.  Only then can one explore
what might solve the problems, but it helps to have professionals doing
professional jobs (whether those jobs are paid or not -- many at ICANN are
not, but a good number are).

You don't see me calling for ICANN to abolish itself, but you do see me
asking it to constrain itself to what it has reasonable institutional
capacity (and strategic placement [and perhaps informal collegial
authority] in the policy world) to address productively.  The fact is,
ICANN has gotten my attention (thanks to Robin and Milton, credit where
credit's due).  Not all critics are trying abjectly to tear down the
institution, and to conflate them leads one to ignore potential information
that might lead to improvement, purely on the basis of personal animosity.
ICANN needs to get over the criticism and simply be honest about evaluating
what doesn't work in the current setup, because otherwise it'll never even
*try* to fix it.  That would lead to the triumph of ego over rationality
and progress, which would be a shame.
_ _ _ _ _

That said, with regard to the specific case of directing an external ad
campaign, which is what this part of the thread is about, I would *not* be
the "right" one myself, because even the experience I have does not rise to
the level of professional specific expertise with regard to advertising and
marketing as a focus of job duties.  I've seen a few professionals do that
sort of work, and they have professional instincts and skills that I don't
have.  That's not my professional training, and I would never try to pass
myself off as such.  But if I were appropriately experienced and wanted to
do that job, then I'd expect to get paid competitively on staff to do it!

:-)

If you want to devise an ad campaign, you get an advertising/marketing
professional expert to lead the process, and give that person the resources
to really understand the ICANN-specific issues from both the technical and
public policy sides (it's unlikely that any one person would have that
triple-play expertise at a professional enough level to do the job
effectively -- it would have to be a coordinated and integrated team effort
bringing together individuals with those varying skills).
_ _ _ _ _

Public governance in a democracy is an inherently messy proposition.
There's a lot of "riff-raff" to be dealt with, because there are a lot of
disagreements in general public policy that you'll *never* possibly get
away from.  It *cannot* become a clean process, because power politics are
inherently messy.  There is no silver bullet to clean it up and never will
be.  ICANN is addressing areas of fundamental policy disagreement in its
policy ambitions, and there is simply no way to avoid the mess.  It comes
with the package.

So either ICANN must accept the mess for what it is, or it should step away
from the contentious issues and stick to the clean ones (the narrow
technical concerns that have a better chance for discovering consensus).

You ain't gonna square the circle, believe me.  If ICANN keeps trying to do
that, it is setting itself up for systematic failure at the outset (and
then the only question is whether or not it will be able to impose that
failure on the entire Internet, and thus the entire world).

Ignore that truth, and ICANN will doom itself (and possibly the rest of us)
to that sad fate.

All I'm trying to do here is help ICANN steer a path that does not lead to
self (and perhaps broader) destruction.  I can't help ICANN to recognize
this.  Only ICANN can help itself.  I guess that really means the staff and
the Board.

Meanwhile I need to find a paying job.  All this pro bono work takes up a
lot of time (and in some circles it beefs up the resume, though I expect
perhaps not inside ICANN) but doesn't pay the bills, because I don't get a
salary from IPJ or NCUC.

Now, don't be ungrateful for all this volunteer work I've expended on
behalf of improving ICANN policy...

;-)

Dan
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance